‘It’s The Media’s Fault’

An open letter to the people who say ‘It’s the media’s fault.’

Your accusation is broad, and you need to check yourself. I’m in the ‘media,’ and by that, I mean, I do a morning show at a local radio station that focuses on playing music.

To say it’s ‘the media’ is like saying ‘it’s the restaurant industry’ when I get a steak over-cooked.

In crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, I report information as I get it from news sources, and a lot of it is local. But at the same time, I am not a journalist. I don’t go out and get the story. I talk about the facts that I get. I also, occasionally, give my thoughts, just like any person would when they hear any news story.

No matter what my opinion is on any given topic, it's not intended to be hype or cause panic. I can be wrong, and sometimes times I am. And that is because, like you, I’m a flawed human being. It’s just my personal opinion at the time.

But I’ll tell you this. I am not part of some grand global conspiracy. I don’t attend secret backroom meetings where the plotting and planning on how to get that ‘common’ folk happens. And there is not a single person I know or work with, that is.

I think there are many of us in this business that get labeled as ‘the media’ feel that way. We feel that too many people think we are a part of a massive conspiracy and that we are the bullhorns to that conspiracy. But trust me, most of us would rather not have to focus on things like this COVID crap on and continually report/talk about it.  And we certainly don’t want friends and families in our community to have to worry about those types of things or have it affect them. I would rather talk about topics that don’t cause that kind of stress.

Some of us in ‘the media,’ we have dealt with this too many times throughout our careers. For me, it’s been significant area floods, mass shootings, and crazy wildfires that threatened to burn an entire city of more than half a million people. And to make it worse, those fires happened in back-to-back years. The following year, the whole town was on edge, wondering if it would happen again.

When those community-disasters happen, the local ‘media’ do not cause them. We are a part of them. They affect us as well. We are there with the victims, and occasionally, we are victims. We hear the stories of those in our community that are directly affected. We understand their sorrow, their grief, their pain, and we cry with them. Then we go home to our own families, trying hard not to let that pain and sorrow that we just heard, affect them. But something like that takes its toll, and they can see it in us anyway.

I’ve gone through that way too many times than any one person should.

Do you want to point fingers at the ‘media’? Point them at a different ‘media.’  Point them at Social Media. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter that allows idiots to spew the most hateful, vile garbage you’ve ever seen.

Those people usually get it from some website that adheres to their particular belief structure, while having absolutely no facts to back it up. Social media platforms are the problem when it comes to spreading falsehoods, panic, hate, and lies.

So next time you want to make a broad accusation and blame 'the media', be conscientious of who you are referring to. Many of ‘the media’ are not bad people. We are just everyday people living in the same communities you are in. We are just doing our job and trying to get information out to people who are listening -- and trying to entertain them.